Ask six candidates for governor about Maine’s pension crisis and you get six answers.

Change the state Constitution. Order an investigation. Develop a new, less-generous system. Switch state employees to a 401(k) system. Bite the bullet and pay up.

Unfortunately, there are no pain-free solutions to Maine’s $4.4 billion dollar problem.

The blame falls squarely on a series of governors and Legislatures who shortchanged annual payments to the system in favor of other priorities. The collapse of the stock market then compounded the problem.

But before the recriminations begin, it’s worth stepping back and looking at the larger picture.

Maine is a small state and, while our $4.4 billion seems large, it’s a drop in the bucket compared to the estimated $3 trillion national shortfall in state pension funding.

Then there are a variety of large, individual municipal systems that face similar problems.

For years, it was always easier for state officials to grant future benefits to state workers than to give them pay raises in current dollars.

Benefits would be paid by some future governor, legislator or mayor.

Promises of future medical care once seemed cheap; retired workers died much earlier.

After decades of runaway medical inflation and extended life expectancies, delivering on those promises is now very expensive.

It’s easy, however, to wag a finger at government, but the trend in corporate America was much the same. The Big Three automakers dug themselves into a similar hole by pledging generous benefits to retirees.

Now those workers are living longer and costing companies far more than they expected.

What’s more, corporate America has taken advantage of a loophole not available to government — walking away from promises to retirees.

A succession of U.S. firms, beginning with Studebaker Co., in 1963, underfunded their pension liabilities and then had them discharged in bankruptcy.

Since then, steel companies and airlines have shifted their obligations to the federal Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation, which itself is underfunded by hundreds of millions.

But the irresponsibility doesn’t end there. Surveys show that 40 percent of Americans over 55 have saved less than $25,000 for retirement. Meanwhile, financial planners estimate it takes about $1.25 million in retirement savings to produce about $50,000 in retirement income.

Obviously, a whole lot of people aren’t going to make up the difference in 10 years, particularly with high unemployment and others being downscaled out of higher-paying careers.

Looking even more widely, we see that this is really a global problem. Public workers in France staged walkouts yesterday over proposals that would increase their retirement ages.

Government obligations and deficits have brought Greece to the verge of collapse, while Ireland, Portugal and Spain are not far behind.

In the United States, we have come through at least a decade of living beyond our means and failing to plan for longer lives and higher retirement expenses.

It will be interesting to see if, over the next decade, we can muster the political will and determination to dig ourselves out of this hole.

It won’t be easy.

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